About the Role The Senior Planner is responsible for ensuring manufacturing operations run efficiently, predictably, and safely by developing and maintaining robust short, medium, and long-term production plans. Operating within a high-volume food production environment, the role aligns people, materials, and equipment to meet customer demand, service targets, and cost objectives. As the final authority on production priorities and schedule changes, you will play a critical role in enabling operational excellence, supporting food safety and compliance, and ensuring consistent delivery in a dynamic setting. This is What You’ll Actually Do You will own the end-to-end production scheduling process, translating demand forecasts into realistic, achievable plans that reflect capacity, labour, materials, and equipment constraints. Working closely with Operations, Materials, Engineering, Quality, and Supply Chain teams, you will optimise throughput, minimise downtime, and respond quickly to unplanned events such as breakdowns, labour shortages, or demand volatility. You will authorise and adjust schedules as required, ensuring ERP/MRP systems and visual planning tools always reflect the latest agreed plan. Alongside this, you will lead and develop a small team of schedulers, setting clear objectives, conducting regular 1:1s and PDRs, mentoring capability, and embedding best-practice planning standards. You will also support governance requirements, including P74 sign-off, and ensure new product launches are fully planned, reviewed, and production-ready. As a model of FFG’s core values and behaviours, you will actively champion a culture of continuous improvement and encourage others to do the same. You will also support your team in working towards clearly set objectives and KPI’s. Ideally, This is You! Essential: Proven experience in production planning, scheduling, or factory operations, ideally within a manufacturing or FMCG environment Strong working knowledge of ERP/MRP systems and production scheduling tools Advanced Microsoft Excel skills with the ability to analyse and interpret production data Demonstrated experience making judgement-based planning decisions and confidently adjusting plans when required Strong understanding of manufacturing flows, constraints, efficiencies, and line performance Clear, confident communicator able to influence across all levels of the organisation Resilient, organised, and effective under pressure in a fast-changing environment Desirable: Experience leading or mentoring a team of schedulers or planners Background in high-volume food production or regulated manufacturing environments Experience supporting new product introductions and production readiness reviews Exposure to continuous improvement initiatives within planning or operations Strong commercial awareness with the ability to balance service, cost, and efficiency